Paper short abstract:

In a global context over prison system, this paper analyzes how professional and social practices of prison officers changes the context of a Brazilian small town. The city dynamics is swayed by daily tensions of it's two prisons, but the officers position increases their agency on town social life

Paper long abstract:

Concerning recent Brazilian public security policies, especially regarding the increasing number of prisons built outside the metropolitan areas, this study intends to examine the everyday social and professional life of prison officers from Itirapina, a countryside town at the State of São Paulo (Brazil), where two prisons had been established. The analysis takes into account the perspective of those officers over the impact on the county caused by the prison transferring to the countryside. Similarly to the inmates, the officers' routine is connected to prison, hence their vocabulary and ways of acting shifts between the prison system and the urban places of the small city. The discourses construction and values that places the agent in a privileged social position and status will be analyzed; along to the ways that position increases their agency on city's social life, reshaping the urban space. Owing to that phenomenon, it is inadequate to classify Brazilian prisons as "total institutions", as Goffman (1974) puts it. The social production of urban space cannot be left aside, for it becomes the site of new relations, based on practices from the prison system. Inside prison meanings and practices spreads and are reproduced by that professional group practices and influences.

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